


Fancy Meeting You Here

by iimpavid



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Aliens, Angst, Bad Haiku, Groundhog Day, Haiku, M/M, Reincarnation, Science Fiction, Slice of Life, stillsuit, timeloop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 23:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14924810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid
Summary: Zer0 tells the ECHO, "This is not normal./From beyond the grave, I rise/ like a jellyfish.Weaker of body/ and without munitions to/ compensate, I fight."





	Fancy Meeting You Here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scarebeast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarebeast/gifts).



> Concept: the lives of the vault hunters are a Groundhog Day loop caused by faulty NewU coding and Eridian time rifts. By opening a vault Jack has doomed himself to truly endless enemies. At least, until someone dies off-world.
> 
> This is from an RP I had going a few years ago when I was first playing through Borderlands 2; my hard drive crashed and I had some interesting thoughts about what might just happen to the player characters in-world as a result. It's not polished or necessarily finished but I love it anyway.

**[Before]**

Waking up anywhere other than a New-U defies Zer0's expectations.

In silence, they take stock of their person.

They aren’t bleeding heavily anymore, not externally. The state of their internal organs and mechanisms, however, is up for debate. Their hands ache from the cold and wind bites and seeps through the fissures in their body armor and stillsuit. The stillsuit, at least, is still functional; after all they are still alive. The atmosphere of Pandora, even here in the ice wastes, would shrivel them like a simpr berry left too long in the sun otherwise. There is not enough water here for them by any stretch of the imagination.

Being berated by a clearly-defective CL4P-TP unit only makes matters worse. Zer0 regards it with silence, reminding themself not to throw the squat, yellow bot off the nearest cliff. The murderous impulse only gets worse after a massive bullymong rips out CL4P-TP's eye and the unit continues its screaming and buffoonery.

They remind themself that this is necessary. They must get to somewhere safe. Then they can deal with revenge.

They don’t realize they aren’t the sole survivor of Handsome Jack's betrayal this time around. Not until they’re facing down Knuckledragger and a horde of bullymongs.

All this for CL4P-TP's eye.

No primate should have so many arms and be territorial. It seems unfair. It's too easy for them to win in a fight.

The nearest bullymong, who clearly wants to reduce Zer0 to circuit-and-bone soup, takes both barrels of a shotgun to the head. Zer0 turns, glad they don't have to worry about their ears ringing in their suit, and there was Axton right behind them, reloading and grinning.

Zer0's helmet display is a series of exclamation points. "Miraculously/ you, too, return from the dead/ I am elated."

"Same to you!"

"You will go after/ the big one and I/ will cover you, yes?" Without waiting for a reply, Zer0 lobs a grenade toward Knuckledragger and finds a perch from which to snipe the smaller bullymongs. Retrieving the CL4P-TP's eye will be a cakewalk with company.

"So, come here often?" Axton's smile is bright despite the bullymong viscera they're standing in. CL4P-TP is shouting in the distance, something about a door.

"Gladly, I do not./ This is all Handsome Jack's fault/ we should repay him."

"I like the way you think."

* * *

 

Zer0 expects Pandorans computers to recognize them as a superior cybernetic organism and respect them accordingly. This is an error in their thinking that they discover much to their distaste. Machines here don't function like they do on their homeworld. They’re subtle about their irritation-- they _did_ avoid punting CL4P-TP off a cliff-- but there is always a last straw. After a good twenty minutes of fiddling with code that cannot, for some absurd reason, right itself they stab the outdated computer through its monitor as punishment.

Axton, from across the room does not point out that the computer's tower is the bettter thing to stab to kill it. "What'd you do that for? You know you just gotta be nice to 'em, right?"

The computer is sparking and smoking slightly. "It is hardly true/ AI. Why should I be "nice"/ to an inferior?" The scare quotes around "nice" blink on their helmet's display for emphasis. "Don't these creatures know/ who I am? They lack respect./ I dislike this place."

On their homeworld they were a prince, the scion of a great house. On their homeworld lesser robotics and organics knew their place. Or else they were chained and drowned in the endless oceans.

Pandora was a long, long way from home.

* * *

 

Axton whoops as the last Goliath falls. "Did you see that?" His hand wavers a bit when he gestures to the corpses strewn around the bandit camp.

Zer0 leaps down from the roof they'd crouched on, covering their somewhat shaky landing with a roll before standing, gripping Axton by the shoulders and turning him to face them. "It was hard not to."

Axton grins. "There you are! Didn't you have the north end of the camp?" He points due west.

"You've concussed yourself again./ Disoriented." Zer0 lifts their other hand to turn Axton's head, examining the bloody side. "Do you know the year?"

They pull a small flashlight from his bag, shining it in Axton's eyes. His pupils contract when Zer0 shines it at them. A typical mammalian bodily response, they note with satisfaction.

Axton's affinity for acquiring head injuries is concerning-- probably a consequence of his habit of running toward danger, guns blazing. Zer0 can't complain about that bit of tactics as it allows them to snipe in relative safety as Axton draws the brunt of most attacks between himself and his turrets. Their best is always better than their enemies’.

The point remains, though, that the human brain is delicate and does not appreciate being jostled around. Axton must be more cautious. Nothing Zer0 has managed to say has convinced him of this.

Axton says, "Year depends on planet," and pulls away from the hand steadying his head. "That hurts yanno."

"After playing punching bag/ for a Goliath?" Zer0's helmet projects, pointed and sarcastic, "wOW".

This traumatic head injury didn't kill Axton, not this time, and for that, Zer0 sends up a rare prayer of thanks. They have seen enough human insides for a lifetime. Red, viscous, and lacking the proper elastic membranes and casing to keep them together.

"You're a riot."

"My sense of humor/ is en pointe as usual./ You're welcome, Axton." With a hand on Axton's shoulder, they steer him back toward the car. "I will be driving."

"Good 'cause I could use a nap."

"If you try, I will wake you/ you're concussed. Again."

"You said that already."

Zer0 buckles themself into the driver's seat. "Shoot any bandits."

* * *

 

There is a string of photos beside Zer0's safehouse bunk. A dozen different scenes.

Tina filling up a water gun with a belt full of water balloon grenades. A picture of Zer0 and Axton, arms around each other's shoulders, at the mouth of Caustic Caverns. Ellie in the process of making a pink crop top that has #filthybandit scrawled across the front in gold glitter. Rope burns on Axton's wrists, back, thighs. The luck shrine Zer0 kept on their homeworld-- positioned above the luck shrine they keep now in honor of their patron god, right beside their Bunkers and Badasses dice set. A shot of Axton's lower back where there is a patch of skin colored teal-grey and lightly scaled; it once belonged to Zer0 before a NewU coding error. A hazy underwater picture of Zer0's teeth, taken in the rare safety of a full bathtub, both rows newly-dulled and human-looking, from the next NewU coding error.

* * *

 

They reach the third cycle through the betrayal and murder of Handsome Jack.

They aren't taking this seriously. They can't. Neither Zer0 nor Axton has the energy to devote to it anymore. Not when they know what happens next. The first time they were intent on their purpose, naturally; the second they decided to get it over with as fast as possible. But now time they're on a vacation planet hunting with Sir Hammerlock. They've done this all before and there's no sign of it letting up, so what's the rush?

This time is different though, because Zer0 dies off-world, and they don’t even die in battle-- that's the part that infuriates them the most. They came to this planet for the glory of their people, for the preservation of their bloodline, for the honor of their entire people. And yet they do not have the decency to die properly.

The thing that kills them is simple eridium poisoning. _Eridium poisoning._

So severe that their blue-grey skin is tinged pink and the bioluminescent patterns that ring their fingers, throat, and chest are purple. They'd been that way for so long Zer0 had assumed it was one of the many coding errors in NewU cloning and not something as deadly to their species as eridium. But of course, it had been everywhere on Pandora. In the air, the food, the people-- woe that they had ever removed their stillsuit for even a second. And yet they had and now they lived to regret it.

* * *

 

Zer0 remembers none of this:

The inflammation in their few remaining organic joints that started to slow them down.

Axton, joking, "No more backflips off the car for you old man".

Memory malfunctions.

"Why are we not on/ Pandora? We must kill Jack/ soon. Immediately."

Axton, still there, pulling them back into bed. "You're dreamin'. We already did that, babe, go back to sleep."

Cardiac incidents and carrying an AED-- it was faster than a NewU and, anyway, Hyperion hadn't gotten NewU's everywhere in the galaxy just yet.

Increasingly frequent glitches in his sword arm's digistruct function that, more than once, nearly impale someone near him. "I'm glad you're so happy to see me," Axton says when it happens to him. Zer0 intentionally shorts out his sword arm and keeps the deadened limb in a sling. It's too dangerous, now.

Tremors that no gun could compensate for-- the end of his perfect headshot record.

Getting shot and bleeding purple instead of blue. (That’s what confirms eridium poisoning when they go to the hospital. The element is so new to the universe at large no doctor knows know how to filter it from the bloodstream. Certainly not a bloodstream as complex as Zer0's. They join other labrats. When they joke about it, Axton's laugh is less than sincere.)

The quiet dread that they confessed to Axton in the night. "This... This will kill me.” Their fever puts them at a very human 98 degrees Farenheit, instead of their natural 91. It feels too much like being lit on fire. "I do not think I'm ready/ but all things must end."

Axton, _still there_ beside the hospital bed. "Shut up. Just shut up, that's the fever talkin'. You're gonna be fine."

It's a seizure that kills them, brought on by the fever even though they’re covered in as much ice as can be found. The electrical impulses in their brain fire all at once and they convulse, back arching as the circuitry and grey matter fry.

The rest happens all at once: something ruptures, something fails. Purple bubbles and bleeds from their nostril slits. Their heart stops but that happens long after their brain goes.

* * *

 

Zer0 was never devout, never went to temple on homeworld. They'd been dedicated young, before the trees' migration had nearly killed them and started them on the path to becoming a proper cyborg with a talent for assassination, to restoring their family's good name. They hadn't thought of their deity since. But they might as well have held worship on the battlefield for how well they embodied this deity's creed, for how they never shied away from a challenge and had learned the honor inherent in fighting alongside other skilled warriors.

That sort of thing should be rewarded. Not with any of this copying crap Hyperion does. There's no soul work involved in rebooting a conscious mind before it touches the void, straight into a body that is as strong as it has ever been. That's cheating. No, this resurrection will be the real deal and it will be a much greater challenge to recover from.

* * *

**[After]**

 

Zer0, when they wake up on that glacier once more, ignores CL4P-TP.

Something is different.

They sit and stare at the ice and wind for a long time, taking inventory with a processor that is slower than it should be. They know they’ve upgraded it recently so at least it's still under warranty and they can get it replaced when they eventually get to an interplanetary trading hub-- not that the reassurance makes the slowness any less frustrating.

That they are not on a different rim planet, vault hunting with Axton is a concern without an obvious answer, so they do not pursue it. The easiest assumption to make is that they have respawned-- but they can't remember where the last NewU was, only that it wasn't _here on Pandora._

Their body is off. Their body is wrong.

It isn't the damage confusing; that, they expect. The cracked ribs, aching throat, those things they recall. The problem is how grounded and like their self they are in this moment-- suddenly aware that they had forgotten that they were a copy before... _Before what?_

Before they were without guns. That is as good a starting point as any.

The shape of their teeth is different in their mouth. They're sharper, they realize, remembering the exact NewU reconstruction that had scattered his coding into Axton's too much and messed up their teeth. They remember being outraged about such an intimate violation. They were _Zer0’s teeth_. They had only partially been joking when they’d demanded that Axton give them back. The commando had only laughed.

That had been long ago, before they came to appreciate the benefits of such luck.

Their hands are a bit broader, they stand taller, and-- Zer0 notices a dozen other small coding errors and mutations that the NewU's made have been remedied. Their memory is patchy in places with corrupted files but they guess that they remember 70% of the last several years, which is statistically very good but not good enough for their satisfaction. It tells them nothing about how they came to this point. Unarmed, disoriented, wounded. They sit, all but begging to be attacked. What a disgraceful thing.

This is the thought that gets them up.

When the sun has moved enough that they begins to feel cold in their sub-par stillstuit they stand and follow CL4P-TP. Their cybernetic arm has a minor wiring problem, they suspect, as they can't digistruct their katana. Dazed, they take a detour to pick up a health hypo that they remember is in a chest to the east.

CL4P-TP complains.

CL4P-TP always complains. Zer0 remembers this part.

There are bullymong and bloodshed.

Then they find Sanctuary.

But Sanctuary is wrong. They have yet to see the other vault hunters-- Gaige, Maya, Salvador-- none of them seem to be near Sanctuary. It's never been like the before.

They ask Scooter, "Where's the commando?"

"Who?"

"Former Dahl military./ His name is Axton."

"There's no Axton been 'round here, man, I'm sorry."

"What about Maya?/ Salvador? Krieg? Gaige, with her/ Deathtrap? Anyone?" A series of question marks alternates with exclamation points on their helmet's display.

"Nah, just you. I'll keep an eye out for those friends of yours though, alright? You ain't gotta worry about 'em I'm sure they're fine."

Scooter's expression takes Zer0 a long moment to understand-- when they realize how close into the man's space they’ve gotten, they take a broad step back. They didn't mean to be threatening.

"Thank you for helping."

This time through is wrong indeed. Zer0 begins to familiarize themself with the thought that, excepting the Crimson Raiders, they are alone.

* * *

 

When the Warrior lies dead Zer0 stabs Jack through his thoracic spine as Jack is saying "I can't die here."

The speech gets old the fourth time through.

The sword point emerges, wet and shining, an inch under Jack's sternum. It's pierced his diaphragm and taken the wind out of the self-righteous tirade. The hologram that had been holding a gun to Jack's head flickers out of existence and the body suit's cloaking mechanisms reset.

Zer0 draws their sword back, the steel not making a sound while Jack gurgles through half a breath, failing to turn around thanks to his newfound paralysis but kept upright by the motion of the blade. With a smooth backhanded strike, Zer0 beheads him, catches Jack's head by it's perfectly coiffed hair before it hits the ground. They turn the head so they can see its eyes. Its face twitches and drips blood onto Zer0's boots, frowns in outrage at being unable to speak.

These are probably the reflexes of confused neurons and not markers of consciousness.

Still, Zer0 tells it, "You can and you did," before they drop it back to the ground and walk away.

* * *

 

It's a few more weeks before they send news to Axton, who is lightyears off Pandora. The rumor is that he is vault hunting with a high school drop out (Gaige was her name; she'd been disappointed that they wouldn't remove their suit to allow her to examine their cybernetic parts). The pair of them working their way around the galaxy.

Zer0 tells the ECHO, "This is not normal./From beyond the grave, I rise/ like a jellyfish.

Weaker of body/ and without munitions to/ compensate, I fight."

Their helmet goes through a series of emoticons, an unfortunate error they’ve been having lately, before it settles on a flickering They hand the device to a courier along with a heinous amount of money. "Deliver it fast/ or learn the meaning of pain/ without your kidneys."

They have no idea if or how Axton will respond, but they hope.


End file.
